Joe A Faulkner
01-14-2017, 6:18 PM
Last week we got hit with a cold spell and some bitter cold weather. I was in the final stages of building a nightstand for my father-in-law and decided to do the finishing work in the house. I heat my shop with space heaters and I don't like using these for extended periods when the temps are near zero. I assembled the sides, did a dry fit of the entire piece and then finished all of the parts before the final glue-up. To pass the time between coats of finish, I took a shot at carving a spoon. This was my second attempt at this. I used a piece of green cherry on my first attempt and was moving along very nicely, until in an over enthusiastic attempt to make the spoon light and thin, I whittled a hole right smack dab in the middle of the bowl. On that first attempt I even hacked out the handle with an ax. On attempt number two I was less ambitious. I roughed out the shape on the bandsaw and then carved from there. I used an old piece of maple, a cut-off from my workbench build. I wouldn't recommend hand carving dry maple to anyone. The spoon turned out a bit on the primitive side. If my knife was sharper, I think I could shave off more of the facets, but in the end I decided to settle on the primitive look. I think my next attempt will be on another piece of green or semi-green cherry.